Artist
by meldahlie
Summary: Why does a forgotten birthday present cause Hermione to rethink an old friend? Post DH; one-shot.


Artist

Why does a forgotten birthday present cause Hermione to rethink an old friend?

~:~:~

She should have thought. She should have thought! She should have _thought!_ She should have _**thought**_ _ **!**_

If there was one thing that annoyed Hermione Granger more than other people being stupid, it was the realisation that she had failed to think something through completely herself.

The thing Hermione had failed to think through was Luna Lovegood.

This, in itself, was strange, for in the course of six years of knowing Luna, Hermione had trained herself not to think about Luna. It was impossible to make sense of Luna. Yet it was possible to make sense of anything if you thought about it properly, with the aid of enough books, of course. Or it ought to be. But it wasn't with Luna.

Luna was, well, impossible. Her thoughts moved in strange, unfathomable ways as queer and illogical as her clothes, throwing out oddities like invisible, non-existent crumple-horned snorkacks and all too visible radish earrings. Given a perfectly complex, difficult problem, Luna would stare at it with her strange, bulging eyes, like a rabbit meditating on a cabbage leaf. Then, about three seconds after you had decided she was obviously thinking about something else entirely and had quite forgotten your problem, she would gaze dreamily off elsewhere and come out with some stunningly simple pronouncement which cut through every bit of the complexity to dissolve the problem entirely, as if it had been mist in sunshine.

This made Hermione's logical brain ache terribly, and so she had trained herself, very carefully, not to think about Luna. To like Luna, but not to think about her. It was uncomfortable, having something you didn't think about, but it was less uncomfortable than thinking about it.

Even more uncomfortable was the realisation that she _should have thought._

It had all begin with Hermione's twenty-first birthday, or rather, about a month before it. Hermione had gone to the Burrow for Sunday lunch, as Molly frequently asked her to do and Hermione just as frequently did. It made Ron happy, and Harry was usually there as well, and Ginny and Percy and George, and increasingly often Angelina Johnson just happened to be there too. That particular Sunday had been a more than usually crowded dinner table. Percy had brought a friend; Bill and Fleur had turned up; and at the last minute Luna had drifted down through the garden and been squeezed in at Molly's elbow.

When everybody was getting up after lunch and heading for the garden or the sitting room ("Anywhere but the dishes!" George had remarked, donning a large apron and roping Angelina in to dry for him), Luna had marched up to Hermione. "It's your birthday in September," she had said without preamble. "Twenty-one's important for muggles. Daddy and I thought you should have a present. He thought a gurdyroot necklace to keep off the wrackspurts and make sure you had a nice day might be good." Luna tugged at the of string of butterbeer corks around her own neck. "The corks absorb the gurdyroot essence and then release it when the wrackspurts get near, you see. But," she shook her head, "I knew Ron would be getting you jewellery. So I just made you these."

And before Hermione had had a chance to sort her startled thoughts into any sort of coherent, let alone appropriate, remark, Luna had pressed a small cardboard box into her hands. "Don't open it now. Wait 'til your birthday."

With which, and without waiting for any thanks, Luna had smiled vaguely past Hermione and drifted off to tell Fleur about the benefits of meeting nargles when you were pregnant. From the way Fleur had blushed scarlet and not met anybody else's eye for the rest of the afternoon, Hermione could only assume Luna had somehow managed to accurately divine that this was relevant.

As for the gift – well, there had been nothing to do other than take it home and put it away for her birthday. It was a small box; in fact, Luna seemed to have scavenged for the box in the muggle part of Ottery St Catchpole, for it still bore shreds of brown parcel tape and had the return address of a fishing tackle shop in Plymouth printed on the bottom. Hermione had simply hoped that Luna's instruction to save it meant the contents wasn't actually _live,_ given that she had put it on the top shelf of her wardrobe _._ And then, unfortunately, she had forgotten it.

Three weeks after her birthday, Hermione had opened her wardrobe in a hurry. Perhaps with the sudden jerk, Luna's box had fallen with a crash on her head. As Hermione looked down to see what exactly it had been, her mouth had dropped open. The old box had burst, and an exquisitely wrapped parcel lay on the floor. Bright blue fabric that felt and shone like silk in place of wrapping paper, fastened with looped and curling ivory-coloured ribbon. On the parchment gift tag, curling gold letters traced out a "21st " on one side, and "To Hermione, with love from Luna" on the other.

It was all very unlike radish earrings. Hermione had sat on the floor and stared at the parcel for nearly ten minutes. At this point, she suddenly felt ridiculous, rather as Luna had such a talent for making one feel, entirely without malice, when dealing with her and a complex problem. And, as with Luna and the evaporation of a nice complex problem, there was nothing to do but get to one's feet and pick up the pieces. Usually there were pieces. This wasn't pieces. This was so unlike pieces Hermione had briefly reviewed her 21st birthday presents in case there was somebody else who might have sent this.

It seemed like sacrilege to pull the ribbon, and unfold the silk, and for a moment Hermione genuinely thought she had broken the present, for the neat rectangular bulk collapsed suddenly all over her lap. And then she had realised: it was a pile of book plates. Thick, parchment book plates. Each one had a border of twining rose stems with pink buds and flowers, around fine curling gold letters: ' _This book belongs to Hermione Granger.'_

Again and again, each card just slightly different enough to show they were hand painted. And as Hermione shuffled through them to count that there were, indeed, twenty-one, she realised that the roses were changing. The sprays grew out across the parchment, budded, bloomed and then fell in a gentle flurry of petals that – or was she imagining it? – gave off a faint, brief scent of dried roses.

At the bottom of the stack was a torn-off scrap of brown paper with Luna's apparently fine curling handwriting: _Don't worry, the name will change when you need it to._ Hermione blushed to match Fleur. The fine silver necklace Ron had indeed given her had come with – well, a sort of understanding. Which had a great deal to do with acquiring a couple of other items of jewellery and changing her name in the not too distant future.

How did Luna know these things?! How?! How?!

Hermione stuttered somewhere between mortification and irritation, and the roses budded and bloomed and fell. Budded and bloomed and fell – and Hermione found herself watching them, again and again. They were strangely soothing – and Luna must have painted them herself. Which meant–? Hermione's brain gathered itself back together and made a massive effort for normal logical thought. If Luna had painted these, that meant Luna was an artist. _W_ _hich you should have realised,_ said a little mental voice annoyingly. Those paintings Harry had described, and the beautiful calligraphy of some of the Dumbledore's Army slogans they had fought past at the Battle of Hogwarts. They certainly hadn't been Neville or Ginny's work. Erumpent horns, deadly battles and all, she should have thought!

But leaving frustration aside, if Luna was an artist, that meant she made sense! Had not her mum always said artists were a bit odd? An artistic temperament and all that? If Luna was an artist, she was normal! She was categorisable! She was quite entitled to wear really funny clothes! Say odd things! Drift vaguely about! Send people beautiful birthday presents packed in a scavenged cardboard box! Thus did artists!

Hermione caught up the stack of bookplates in what was definitely an over-dramatic gesture (Luna's oddities always were a bit contagious) and hugged them. They were beautiful – and the whole world made sense again! It was possible to make sense of anything if you thought about it properly with the aid of enough books! She would just need art books to make sense of Luna!

And of course – Hermione found herself smiling, which surely counted as a gift from Luna too – she would need to borrow Ron's nose to check out whether those roses really were scented!


End file.
